Sustainability
Sustainability is love; about respecting what gives you joy and making sure to do your part to maintain that joy. Northwest String Summit has always and continues to strive to maintain the natural beauty and longevity of the grounds of Horning’s Hideout as well as our business. Being responsible for our footprint and being mindful of our impact just makes sense as well as makes cents.
JOIN THE GREEN TEAM!
Want to be part of our Green Team? Without the hard work of our site crew staff and volunteers, Northwest String Summit wouldn’t be what it is today. The Green Team is comprised of volunteer members and staff from the Recycling Crew and Oregon Festival Recycling and Compost, Washington County, Wasco County, and the City of Beaverton. If you would like to join our team of sustainability rockstars, please email our Green Team Director – Kina Muir – OregonFestivalRecycling@gmail.com
Klean Kanteen
Our long-term partner Klean Kanteen has provided an amazing solution to the glaring issues with single-use cups: By going with co-branded reusable Steel Pints you are incentivized with lower prices to refill your beverages throughout the event as well as getting some amazing memorabilia!
Eco Products
For our third year, we proudly exclusively allow vendors to use EcoProducts composting and compostable flatware at our event and will continue to do so until there is a more sustainable option. Last year, we were able to bring composting to NWSS and boasted 2,500 lbs of diverted organic materials and compostable EcoProducts in our pilot year. This year we have a lofty, but achievable goal of 4,000 lbs to divert from the landfill!
Rexius
In 2017, we proudly brought composting to Northwest String Summit. In total, we were able to divert over 2,598 pounds of waste away from the landfill and into composting! None of this would have been possible without the support from production and our lovely food vendors. We require every vendor and caterer on-site to serve their food and drinks on compostable material, or else we won’t allow them to sell it. We know that this may sound harsh, but we care about our Earth deeply. We also understand that throwing a festival creates a lot of waste. Our way of combating that is making sure as little waste ends up in the landfill as possible and instead of having that waste composted to be turned into soil. We are proud to work with Rexius in Eugene, Oregon to ship our compostable materials for processing to become plant food!
Green Mountain Energy
Our Renewable power partner at Green Mountain Energy is providing us with solar-powered generators to offset power used at our Basecamp Glamping outfits. They will also be granting carbon footprint offset credits for all the clean energy we are able to use.
HOW TO PACK SUSTAINABLY
Are you having a tough time wondering what to pack for NWSS? We got you covered! Our Green Team has come up with some earth-friendly items to bring along with you to NWSS to be the most sustainable attendee out there!
The less waste we create, the more clean the grounds will be, and that means more space to dance!
1) Pack it in, pack it out. This may seem really difficult, but when one packs intelligently, it really isn’t so hard. Ditch the disposables! Bring reusable dishes and utensils.
2) Bring a large container of drinking/washing water and reusable water bottles. In addition to the potable water available on site, many vendors have good drinking water available for FREE in the venue. Fill those bottles up at every opportunity!
Remember that Re-USE is one of the three ‘R’s of recycling! For clean, greenwashing in your campsite, use biodegradable soap. Try Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps for certified organic, biodegradable soaps that smell great!
Put your food in reusable storage containers BEFORE you leave, they are often more resistant to the melty cooler ice anyway! Pack out your recyclables too! Keep the containers they came in and put them right back into your now-empty cooler. You pay for that curbside service at home, might as well get your money’s worth. Or better yet, take them back for your refund (10 cents!) and buy yourself a treat for a job well done helping to save the planet and a volunteer recycler’s back (literally).
2) Even the greenest campers may accumulate some waste and recyclables so do yourself and your camp neighbors a favor and bring your items to one of the many recycling stations every day. When we wait until the last day, we spend the weekend wallowing in messy campsites and end up on Monday with unimaginable piles of waste and recycling. Some folks choose to leave those piles (can you believe it?) and real, live people who are VOLUNTEERS spend days after the festival gathering the various piles and sorting through the waste. The real message here: Sort your trash from your recyclables and bring those items to a designated station daily. PLEASE NO MIXED BAGS! Bags with recyclables are sorted by the Recycling Crew on a tall table. When waste gets mixed in, it is quite unpleasant, to say the least.
We love your kiddos, but dirty diapers are not recyclable (yeah, I know, gross)!!
P.S. Plastic Solo cups are NOT recyclable- they are landfill-bound and do not belong in the plastic recycling bin.
3) Cigarette butts and other micro-trash are litter. They don’t just go away. There are trash cans and even butt cans around the property so PLEASE don’t put them on the ground. If you need to, carry an old Altoids tin and stash your micro-trash for later disposal, it works great! Those same real, live people mentioned above spend those same days after the festival picking up that micro-trash (every bottle cap, feather from a boa, candy wrapper, plastic sequin, and cigarette butt). Yuck.
Thank you for taking the time to read this short list of tips. Anyone who has ever been to Horning’s knows what a special place it is. Please spread this message to your Strummit-going friends!